Earlier this month, July 17th - 19th, 2009, the Baltimore Convention Center hosted Otakon, an annual Japanese anime convention in Baltimore, MD. For the third year (not in a row, unfortunately), we got another great Lunar panel together, entitled Lunar: Past, Present, Future. Hosting it was:Lou: Lou Arruda / "Dragonmaster Lou". A long-time Lunar fan and usually credited with the first Lunar website on the internet.Kizyr: Kaiser Farooque--that's me. Another long-time Lunar fan, and VP here at LunarNET.

As always, a huge thanks to everyone who came. The panel was even more full than last time (2007). I hope all of you enjoyed the panel as much as we did.

We started off old-school, with the intro and a little gameplay from Lunar: The Silver Star--just to keep things in perspective, you know.

After that, Lou took us through the history of the series, through the main games, remakes, and whatnot.

I did use this opportunity to point out the huge Japanese-to-English differences sections at LunarNET, since those were put together since our last panel in 2007. Check those out here: TSS, EB, SSSC, and EBC.

We went through a bit of Magical School Lunar as well. We had a bit of gameplay footage--a battle scene, where we showcased a bit of the magic-centric combat system, and a storyline bit from Chapter 6.

Also, last year, the Magical School Lunar walkthrough was finally completed. Since this is the first full walkthrough for the game (only 12 years late!) I thought it merited a bit of attention.

Although, the fact that we started referring to it as "the game that shall not be named" isn't much better.

...sorry about that.

We bridged a bit of a gap with talking about the manga and novels. Now that all 9 of the novels have abridged English versions on LunarNET, what with the Lemina novel finally getting one earlier this year, I feel it deserves more mention. Check out the complete novels page for all that.

Last was the main event... Lunar: Silver Star Harmony. Since we're not as involved on this one as the last two Lunar releases, we don't have much more information beyond what's been released publicly, including Japanese magazines (check out the Famitsu and Otonafami translations on our SSH Media page). Most of what we mentioned at the panel is already up on our main Lunar: Silver Star Harmony page.

In closing, the panel was fun as always. (We weren't as awesome as the Falcom panel earlier in the day, nor did we have as much in the way of giveaways... But it was still good, yeah?) I really hope we get to do this next year. And, more importantly, I hope the Lunar fanbase continues to be this strong, and the Lunar series continues to endure. For in the darkest hour, remakes spring eternal, but a new game could still be on the horizon.